Click on the above 45 r.p.m. image
for a larger view of the record label and to listen to the song, please click
the flashing "On Air" icon.

Biography of Ben McPeek

Benjamin Dewey McPeek was born on August
28, 1934, Trail, British Columbia. During his teenage years he was fast
becoming an accomplished musician. Due to the geographic location, he was faced
with a rather tough decision concerning his pursuit in music: should he move and
study music in Hollywood or in Toronto? He chose Toronto and in 1953 he
enrolled at the University of Toronto and by 1956 he graduated with a degree in
music. McPeek also studied music at the Royal Conservatory of Music in
Toronto.

His career started as pianist performing with various
Toronto dance bands. Word eventually got around about his musical abilities and
so McPeek found himself singing on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
(CBC) with the Five Playboys.

McPeek's musical growth and diversity really blossomed in
the 1960's having a profound impact in the Canadian music industry and
culture. "Entering musical theatre in 1960 as music director of the review
Up Tempo 60, produced at the King Edward Hotel, he wrote music 1963-8 for
That Hamilton Woman, Suddenly This Summer, Actually This Autumn, and the
1968 Spring Thaw," writes Helen McNamara for the Canadian Encyclopedia
website. And in 1963, McPeek composed the words and music for an
opera entitled The Bargain which was based on the Faust legend. His
original piano score for The Bargain is administered today by the
Canadian Music Center. The score was especially written for tenor, mezzo-soprano
and bass-baritone. The Bargain would eventually be telecasted on the CBC
Montréal network in 1966.

In 1964, he established Ben McPeek Ltd. whose company would
provide musical jingles for Chargex, Speedy Muffler King, Toronto
Dominion Bank, Labatt's brewery and the Canadian National.
McPeek became known as the "Jingles King" -- certainly one of the most
busiest ones at that time in Canada, writing at least 2,000 jingles in his
career.

For Canada's centennial, McPeek did the orchestral
arrangement for Ca-na-da which was composed by Bobby Gimby.
Ca-na-da was sung by the Young Canada Singers and it became a runaway
smash hit in Canada for Quality Records, peaking at #3 on the national charts.
"Over the next few years, the recording of Ca-na-da sold half a million
copies. There were some 50 different recordings of the song," write authors Alex
Barris and Ted Barris in their book, Making Music - Profiles from a Century
of Canadian Music. McPeek would revisit the song a second time doing
his own instrumental jazzed-up version of the Gimby song. It too was
released on Quality Records.

For Expo 67, McPeek was commissioned to compose music for
the Canadian Pulp and Paper Pavilion. "Are you aware that Ben composed the music
for the Canadian Pulp and Paper Association pavilion for Expo 67? He did
indeed," exclaimed Allan Macmillan who became a good friend and business
associate to McPeek. "I recall he made a number of trips to the site to
supervise the installation of the audio track containing his music. On
those occasions, I held the fort back in Toronto while he was absent.
Hey...a taste of responsibility!"

"A Wild Pair" was
recorded at Hallmark Studios in Toronto that featured the Staccatos on side
1 and the Guess Who on side 2. The album "Wild Pair was indeed the
very first Nimbus 9 release." - Allan Macmillan. (Click the Nimbus 9 label
to view side 1.)

March 1968 would see new challenges for McPeek as he and
three other principal partners launched the Nimbus 9 record label. "Ben and Jack
Richardson and I were 3 of the 4 founding partners in the Nimbus 9 Productions
music group," said Allan Macmillian, "which came into being in 1968." The
fourth member, according to author John Einarson who wrote American Woman -
The Story of the Guess Who, was Peter Clayton. Two years later,
Macmillan brought on board a fifth partner to the label: Bob Ezrin and he became
assistant Musical Director to Macmillan.

The Nimbus 9 partnership stemmed from "several years
collaboration working on ad conceptions and music to fit for the 'Youth'
campaign for the Coke account," said Macmillan. They had other clients
too, at the time: McCann, Erickson who were responsible for the Honda
commercials. "Remember Honda cycles '2-wheeled freedom on a Honda?'", lamented
Macmillan. "That was Burton Cummings' distinctive voice and from the
discovery that the record deal the Guess Who had (with) Quality Records was
expiring. Clearly, both Jack and Ben saw an opportunity here to sign the
Guess Who...a group with a future one might say."

Thus it was the Coca-Cola account that caused McPeek,
Richardson and their other two partners to take a gamble on the Guess
Who...

The first Nimbus 9 album release was called A Wild
Pair - an album featuring two pop groups, the Staccatos and the Guess
Who. Each had a special musical arranger: Allan Macmillan for the Staccatos
and Ben McPeek for the Guess Who with Jack Richardson as producer for both
bands. This "one-off album" was made exclusively for Coca-Cola Limited by Nimbus
9 Productions, manufactured through RCA. Both groups were still under license
from their respective record companies, Capitol and Quality Records, but each
company gave permission to Nimbus 9 to record their groups with the idea in mind
that any success would be good for their own future releases.

McPeek, Macmillan and Richardson's work on A Wild
Pair paid off. Released in 1968, A Wild Pair sold an
amazing 85,000 copies in Canada! Unheard of figures in those days for
a Canadian album. In fact sales of A Wild Pair turned out to be "the
biggest rock music seller ever at that point in Canadian rock history," writes
Ritchie Yorke in his book, Axes, Chops and Hot Licks. It was an excellent
start for Nimbus 9 whose humble beginnings in Toronto was "a back room in Ben's
offices at 131 Hazelton Avenue," said Macmillan.

With the amazing success of A Wild Pair, Nimbus 9
decided to sign the Guess Who to their label. But in order to do that,
they offered $1,000 to release the band from their remaining contractual
obligations with Quality Records. The record company's executives accepted the
offer mainly because of the "insulting lack of faith in the band and an absence
of foresight" exclaimed author Einarson. Ben McPeek and Jack Richardson
felt there was potential in the Guess Who. "We had a lot of confidence in the
group and our own abilities to somehow expose them to the world, " said
Richardson in an interview with Ritchie Yorke. "Ben and I had a strange kind of
belief that it would turn out alright in the end."

With the band now signed to the Nimbus 9 label, the next
plan was to have them fly down and record at A&R in New York. The band would
record between September 19-26, 1968 with Ben McPeek as musical director and
Jack Richardson as producer. But the venture would be an expensive one
with time costs at $150 per hour, the total recording fee ended up being $9,800.
The studio time and travel costs forced Jack Richardson to mortgage his home and
even that still wasn't quite enough money to pull it off. Ben McPeek also
helped out: "If it hadn't been for the money that Ben was getting for his
jingles," said Richardson, "we would never have cut the album."

The LP was released in Canada in January 1969 as
Wheatfield Soul. McPeek and Richardson's efforts paid off once
again as the album "charted for an impressive thirty-three weeks, peaking at
#3," writes Einarson. "The American release came in April, where it reached
#45 in a nineteen-week Billboard run. It was the lead off the track, the
lovingly orchestrated These Eyes that sold the album in the ears of the
buying public."

With PR men costing Nimbus 9 at $500 per week in New York,
Chicago, Washington, and L.A. to launch These Eyes as the single from the
album, "the song reached the top of three American best-seller charts, sold a
million copies, and returned about $35,000 in production royalties to Nimbus,*"
said author's Alex Barris and Ted Barris.

"The antecedents to that and the 12 yr.-long success story
which followed are fairly well-known to music historians in Canada," said
Macmillan. He also claims that McPeek "opened lots of doors in the music
industry in this country for me...and for many other musicians as
well."

Apart from the Guess Who, here is a short list of some of
the artists that McPeek helped out, keeping in mind that his repertoire had
known no boundaries between "popular" and "serious music:"

Musical Artists or Movie
Themes

Year

McPeek's Musical
Credits

The Rowdyman

1972

Credited for the musical scores in
this highly acclaimed movie starring Gordon Pinsent.

Poco

1973

Horn arrangements, string
arrangements for the pop album Crazy Eyes.

Catch the Sun

1973

Musical scores for this fast-paced
22-minute film documentary of Ontario life entitled Catch the Sun.
The film was distributed by the Imax Corporation.

Only God Knows

1974

Composed the music for a comedy
movie entitled Only God Knows. The film starred Gordon
Pinsent and was directed by Peter Pearson.

Laurie Bower

1976

Arranged and conducted the songs
on for Laurie Bower entitled "Got A Feelin' For Love." Released on
United Artists. Track listing: The Way I Want To Touch You, Woman, Hey
Look At the Sun, Rainy Day People, If You Feel the Same Way, Una Paloma
Blanca, 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover, Come to Mother Nature, Do You
Know Where You're Going To? (Theme from "Mahogany"), Got A Feelin For Love
and Glitter Queen.

Bachman-Turner-Overdrive

1977

String arrangement for the album
Freeways which was BTO's final album.

Niagara Symphony
Orchestra

1980

He composed Piano concerto no.
1. This concerto was done by the Niagara Symphony Orchestra
conducted by Leonard Atherton. Monica Gaylord played piano; premiere
performance, February 9, 1980, Niagara on the Lake, Ontario.

He also recorded albums for himself: Ben McPeek, His
Voices and His Orchestra (1965, CTL, CTLS-5060), Original Sounds of Ben
McPeek (1966, RCA CTLS-1080/Camden CAS-2351), Play Me (1973, RCA
KXL-1-0032), Ben McPeek's Latest Fling at the Record Scene (RCA
CASX-2537), and Thinking of You (1975, Attic LAT-1008).

McPeek was a guiding force behind the creation of Guild of
the Canadian Film Composers (GCFC) that was established in 1979. "The
founders believed it was important to encourage all music and production
industry groups to work together," says the official GCFC website. "As the GCFC
grew, it developed into a strong source for composer support and information as
well as an effective communicator with other artist associations, government and
industry. A key element in this growth has been a philosophy that encourages
composers' support of each other."

Another project he started up but did not live long enough
to see its full realization is the Imperial Oil McPeek Pops Library established in
November, 20, 1982. The library consists of Canadian popular music for
orchestras and is administered by the Canadian Music Center. The library is
funded by Imperial Oil. By 1991, the catalogue boasted some 47 selections
that included Ca-na-da, Snowbird and Tears Are Not
Enough.

Ben McPeek passed away on Wednesday, January 14, 1981 in
Toronto. He was beloved husband of Angela Lucchetta and dear father of
Benjamin Jr., Jerome and Geoffrey. He was dear son of Ben and Helen McPeek
of Trail, B.C. and dear brother of Joseph, Nanaimo, B.C. and Sharon (Mrs. K.
MacMillan).

"Ben's untimely death in 1981 was a terrible personal
tragedy for a great many people who were his friends, and a sad loss to the
music scene in Canada," laments Macmillan. "I have long speculated how
Ben, had he lived, might have adapted to the changes in the music business in
the last 25 years. He was an early experimenter in sythesized music and on
a number of occasions in the early 70s travelled up to the National Research
Council labs in Ottawa to try out compositions created for realization on the
NRC "Rube Goldberg" prototype computer-cum-patch cords monstrosity."

Upon his passing, the McPeek family immediately started up
the Ben McPeek Scholarship Fund and was officially implemented later on in 1983 by the
University of Toronto, Faculty of Music. The McPeek Scholarship is awarded
to an outstanding student in second or third year of the composition program.

___________________

*Historical Footnote: Over time Nimbus 9
became so successful that it formed a second label called "Umbrella." Once
again, Macmillan explains how it came into being: "Nimbus also led the pack with
its Direct to Disk recording initiative. Our label was Umbrella.
Collectors items now. Some great music came out of that crazy
venture...Carol Pope and Kevin Staples' effort (the first and only effort that I
ever heard about of a rock band going D to D), Rob McConnell and the Boss
Brass, Ruggiero Ricci playing the 24 Paganini Caprices, the Humber Jazz
Ensemble, Dr. Boyd Neel's chamber ensemble (name?) and a few other notable
efforts. Nervy performances, to say the least! Nervy stuff going on
in the control room too!!" [authors note: another example of their
"Direct-to-Disc" initiative is an album entitled appropriately enough
Canadian Brass Direct to Disc released in 1977 on their Umbrella
label.]